The applicant has previously described in U.S. Ser. No. 09/112,785 method and apparatus for printing out images using an ink jet printing system on a print media using a pagewidth ink jet printhead. The image can also be transformed by an image processing program loaded into the camera system for providing various effects on the image. The applicant has also disclosed recording data on the back of a printed photograph which can be used to reprint or recover the image which is printed on the front of the print media sheet. Such a printing system requires that there are two printheads one for printing the image itself and one for printing the data in an encoded fault tolerant form on the back of the photograph.
In applicant's U.S. Ser. No. 09/112,824, a method and apparatus for reproducing a photograph for example, printed using a camera system such as disclosed in U.S. Ser. No. 09/112,781 or U.S. Ser. No. 09/112,785 is disclosed.
In EP 354,581, a music score is encoded as a matrix of dots along a margin on a sheet and the data is read by a linear scanner. The scanner reads the width of the matrix which is much less than the width of the music score sheet. The amount of data encoded and therefore requiring processing is limited. Eight rows of binary data are used to record the music score in a 12 row matrix. The scanner is hand held and reading the data can result in errors if the angle of the linear scanner is too large such that the width of the scanner does not fully cover the width of the matrix. The invention disclosed in EP 354,581 has limited use and the disclosure does not suggest itself to use with a credit card size data card (e.g. 55 mm×85 mm) as disclosed in U.S. Ser. No. 09/112,781.
In the article, “Optical Sheet Memory System”, Shinji Ohyama, Electronics and Communications in Japan, Part 2, Vol. 75 No. 4, 1992, pp 73-85, a system for recording a number of images and a duration of sound on a postcard size sheet using printed dots is disclosed. Postcards are mass-produced using a “precision printing method” the substance of which is not described. This system while similar to applicant's U.S. Ser. No. 09/112,785 or U.S. Ser. No. 09/112,824 does not provide for a portable on-demand print imaging system nor does it provide an output with both a viewable image and an encoded recoverable form thereof. The postcard is unusable without a data reader.
The applicant has disclosed in co-pending applications U.S. Ser. No. 09/693,471, U.S. Ser. No. 09/693,083 and U.S. Ser. No. 09/693,134 filed concurrently herewith, methods for recording data relating to an image captured by a camera system on top of or coincident with the printing of the image itself, that is, the image and the data are recorded on the same side and in the same area of the print media. Such a method requires a pagewidth ink jet printhead having at least four ink jet nozzles per printed “dot”, three for printing the color image namely for printing with cyan, magenta and yellow inks and one for printing with an infra-red ink for printing the data corresponding to the image after it has been processed into an encoded fault tolerant digital form.